Tricks up their sleeves - ATI, nVidia and Far Cry 1.2

The announcement of the 1.2 patch for Far Cry caused quite a commotion - Certainly far more of a stir than you would normally expect from a simple update for an already available game title. The reason for this was, of course, the fact that this was no ordinary patch. Rather than simply a rag-bag of bug fixes with the odd new map or little feature thrown in for good measure, the patch announcement had one big, show-stopping change - The addition of Shader Model 3.0 support.

In the last few weeks, we've seen a host of sites running tests with the beta 1.2 Far Cry patch, showing the gains to be had from running the Shader Model 3.0 path. But, that's only part of the story, and today we'll be looking at the bigger picture - Namely, how the Far Cry 1.2 patch affects both nVidia and ATIs current hardware. If you though the update was all about nVidia, you'd be very wrong...